"I knew Matt King at IBM when......."
A former IBM colleague popped up in the news during the last couple of weeks and he's being touted as Facebook's "first blind engineer." In 1995, when IBM launched its inaugural Diversity Task Forces during Mr. "Lou" Gerstner 's tenure as CEO and chairman, Matt King and I, as well as other disabled and nondisabled IBMers, collaborated on a number of issues pertaining to disability improvements in the workplace. Ted Childs was the head of diversity. Matt was a brilliant “technologist” and I was a marketing communications executive. We were both passionate, however, about improving the employment possibilities and leadership opportunities for IBMers with disabilities. Matt King, [ from Mashable article ] I learned that Matt King joined Facebook last year, soon after I retired from IBM. Matt joined IBM in 1998 as a blind programmer. At the time, Matt and I didn't have much in common other than we were both disabled and working at IBM.